The Warriors took a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference Finals behind a ho-hum performance.

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OAKLAND, CA – May 14: Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry (30) grabs the rebound against Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard (0) in the first quarter of Game 1 of the NBA Western Conference Finals at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, May 14, 2019. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

OAKLAND — What would have happened if the Warriors actually tried Tuesday?

In Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals Tuesday, Golden State turned in what was effectively a lax, regular-season effort. They still beat the Blazers by 22 points.

What would have gone down had the Warriors played more than five, maybe 10 minutes of focused, playoff-caliber basketball?

Would they have won by 30? What about 40?

Yes, these two teams might be meeting with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line, but Game 1 proved what I suspected all along: these West Finals are simply not a fair fight.

The Blazers just don’t have the players to match up with Golden State — even without Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins in the fold. On top of that, they don’t have the schemes to get the most out of the guys they have.

Within the first few possessions of Game 1, it was clear that the Warriors would be able to coast to victory. Sure enough, they did just that, only turning on the jets for a few moments at the end of the contest to reward an otherwise sleepy crowd for an otherwise unremarkable — but comfortable — performance.

Yes, the all-important first game of what has routinely been an epic series felt far more like a mid-January game with a few players resting.

The Warriors clearly didn’t fear the Blazers coming into this series, and they found no reason to change their minds in Game 1.

The truth was in the rotations.
(Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

After fighting to get anything out of his bench for the first five games of the Warriors’ tough-fought series win over the Rockets in the last round, Golden State coach Steve Kerr used an 11-man rotation on Tuesday.

Players like Quinn Cook, Jonas Jerebko, and Jordan Bell were not getting break-glass-in-case-of-emergency, treading-water minutes — no, they were getting prescribed run, just like it was a meaningless regular-season game. (In Bell and Cook’s cases, they weren’t even getting run in some of those games.)

That plan worked just fine, too — the Warriors’ bench scored as many points (36) as the Blazers’ star backcourt, every Warrior bench player had a positive plus-minus rating, and the Warriors’ Core Four averaged 34 minutes of playing time, essentially half a quarter of playing time less than they took on in the series against Houston.

When asked — and then pressed — about the deep rotation after the game, Kerr was diplomatic:

“It’s a different game,” Kerr said, comparing these West Finals to the second-round matchup with Houston. “Every team presents different challenged. There’s different matchups. The way Houston plays, it makes it more difficult to play a lot of people.”

But the real answer was obvious.

Kerr can’t say it — he’s too nice a guy and too many people were watching — but I will: the real difference in the matchup between Houston and Portland is that Houston has much, much better players.
(Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

In the coming hours, excuses will be made for Portland. The most common one will surely be that the Blazers were tired for Game 1, having played a tough game against the Denver Nuggets Sunday afternoon in the Mile High City. Indeed, it wouldn’t be hard to find moments when the Blazers’ legs weren’t under them Tuesday.

But I’m not sure when the Blazers will get the rest they apparently need — games come every other day in this series — and I’m curious as to where people think they’ll find more points.

Blazers guards Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are the Blazers’ only serious offensive threats, and they faced a steady diet of Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala, respectively, when they handled the ball in Game 1.

It seems so easily forgotten, but defense matters — especially in the playoffs — and the Warriors have two of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA.

And if either of those guys failed to contain Lillard or McCollum — we are in the freedom of movement era, after all — Draymond Green and Kevon Looney were right behind them. They’re pretty good at defense too.

The big men always seemed to be in perfect help-side position, because they didn’t have to take the other Blazers seriously and could cheat on position. It was almost as if the Warriors were playing zone.

Against Houston, the Warriors had to mark everyone on the floor, making it dangerous to double-team or over-commit help-side defense to stop James Harden or Chris Paul.

Against the Blazers Tuesday, the Warriors treated the Portland spot-up shooters like they didn’t exist, because in the Blazers’ offense, they kind of don’t — Lillard and McCollum don’t trust their supporting cast enough to drive and kick, so instead, they take a steady diet of long step-backs and contested shots in the lane. That’s unlikely to change in Game 2 and beyond.

But sure, the Blazers’ backcourt will be able to combine for the necessary 65-plus points per game doing that…

That nonsense worked against the Nuggets, but it won’t fly against the Warriors’ defense — even one is yet to really put on the clamps.
(Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)

On the other side of the court, the Blazers’ defensive strategy was to leave Stephen Curry — the greatest 3-point shooter of all time — wide open.

No, that’s not hyperbole.

Because of injury, the Blazers are starting the worst pick-and-roll defensive big in the NBA, Enes Kanter, in this series, while the Warriors, without Durant in the lineup, are running a lot of pick-and-roll.

The result was predictable, but it was interesting to see it play out, nevertheless.

Instead of blitzing Curry with a double-team when he came off the pick, the Blazers instead opted to drop Kanter into the lane, as to dissuade Curry from driving to the basket.

The only problem with that strategy is that it often left Curry with yards — again, I mean this literally — of free space to shoot a 3.

Curry made nine of his 15 3-point attempts Tuesday. Half of them were comically wide open.

But when the Blazers brought another person into the fray to cover for Kanter, they merely set up a 4-on-3. Only in this case, Curry still has the ball. Say what you will about the defense in the last two rounds, but at least the Clippers and Rockets — by virtue of blitzing Curry — forced Green to handle the ball.

The Warriors scored 116 points in Game 1, but frankly, that seemed like a low output, given what the Blazers’ defensive was giving them. Overall, they were rushed and unfocused on most offensive possessions, and yet they still shot 50 percent from the floor and 51.5 percent from beyond the arc.

It’s going to take one inspired effort from the Blazers, paired with a next-level letdown from the Warriors, for Portland to steal even a game in this series. Perhaps that happens — we’ve certainly seen both parts of that formula play out separately — but I was told by respectable people coming into this series that the West Finals would be respectable.

One of the arguments I heard was that the Blazers played the Warriors well in the regular season. Yes, that alone was enough for some to think that this series could be interesting.

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